


the boy broken toy soldier

by kissteethstainred



Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: Angst (??), But Based in Season 5, Carl Centric, Carl Gallagher tho, Carl POV, Kinda All Seasons, Literally Not That Happy, Mentions of self-harm, Self-Harm, Teen Angst, WHAT IS THIS LANGUAGE IDK, idk man, idk why
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-02
Updated: 2015-03-02
Packaged: 2018-03-15 23:38:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,945
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3466292
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kissteethstainred/pseuds/kissteethstainred
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Carl wasn’t anybody’s favorite.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the boy broken toy soldier

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Shameless for completely ignoring Carl Gallagher as the beautiful child that he is god damN IT](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Shameless+for+completely+ignoring+Carl+Gallagher+as+the+beautiful+child+that+he+is+god+damN+IT), [ONE DAY I WON'T BE BITTER BUT TODAY IS NOT THAT DAY](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=ONE+DAY+I+WON%27T+BE+BITTER+BUT+TODAY+IS+NOT+THAT+DAY).



> So, another Carl fic written in my anger and disappointment at Carl Gallagher scenes, story lines, and discussions! It's okay, I'm okay, I promise . . . maybe. One day I won't be bitter about Carl Gallagher. One of these days. 
> 
> The nice thing about Shameless showing at 6 where I am is I can write fic in the angry wave that overtakes me after a Shameless episode. Fun! 
> 
> I have no idea what this fic is, tbh. I just kinda wrote and wrote with Beyoncé in the background and ended with this. Ending is abrupt and wack. 
> 
> For my Carl Gallagher defense squad, because I'm dreading next week's ep soooo bad, oh my god.
> 
> come chat with me, type in my inbox and stuff: carlgallahgrs.tumblr.com 
> 
> Comments, kudos, etc, always appreciated, and any mistakes are my own.

Carl wasn’t anybody’s favorite.

* * *

Monica’s favorite was Ian. Fiona whispered that into Carl and Debbie’s ears when Debbie asked why Frank always punched and hit and spat at Ian. Carl wondered what being Monica’s favorite meant—did she spend the most time with them when she returned? did she miss them most when she was gone? did she actually remember them, their birthdate and their middle name and their favorite candy?

Monica’s favorite was Lip. Fiona said that in a biting, scathing remark at Monica, snide and hurt, because Fiona would always be hurt. Monica denied it to her hearts content, made wishful promises, but they all knew it was useless and they were dandelion seeds blown into the wind. Blown far away and wishes never fully fulfilled.

Frank’s favorite was himself. No, that was wrong—Frank’s favorite was Monica, and only himself when Monica wasn’t there. It wasn’t some romantic bullshit, like he wasn’t complete without her. He was just an asshole. Carl wondered when he’d ever learn that lesson.

* * *

Carl wasn’t anybody’s, though. Not anybody’s favorite, not anybody’s smartest child, not anybody’s kindest or strongest or most attractive or anything.

He was just Carl. Somehow that never felt like enough.

* * *

He sat in class and stared at the textbook, trying to ignore the crawling in his stomach. His teacher called on him to read a section in the book. Carl didn’t even know where they were. He just leaned back, raised his eyebrows, said, “I don’t really feel like doing it.”

“You’ll get a detention, Mr. Gallagher,” his teacher said, crossing her arms primly.

Add that to the fucking list. Detention slips piled upon detention slips piled upon books he couldn’t read. Words weren’t supposed to shift and wiggle. Letters shouldn’t make you feel sick. Carl had always been different, apparently.

“Alright, then,” his teacher said, giving Carl a disappointed look and moving to her desk, where the detention slips were. “Alicia, can you read please?”

Another pink slip, shoved into a locker for Carl to stare at. Another detention of sitting in the back and being told to do work and still not understanding anything. These detention slips were becoming his best friend.

* * *

Carl was Monica’s favorite in one thing, though. You’re different, she whispered as they crept down into the kitchen. You’re different. They’re all squeamish. They’d throw up. You’re strong, you can take it. I need someone like that, someone who can stomach it. I don’t need those pussies.

Carl let himself be led down the stairs, Monica tip-toeing across the tile, Carl easily sliding along in his socks.

Which one do you like? asked Monica, staring at the knives drawer. They’re all very shiny, aren’t they?

I like the steak knives, Carl said, taking one out. See the handle? It’s black. I like that.

I like it too, Monica said, plucking the knife from his fingers. It glinted between her fingers, flashing, flesh dull shine nail polish shimmer flesh stop. Monica carried it carefully up the steps back into the bathroom.

Look here, she said, sitting on the edge of the tub. Carl sat next to her. Monica held up her wrist and said, Do you know where your veins are? Show me.

Carl traced the red and blue lines on her wrist, said, Here, and Monica smiled at him like he did something good.

Yes, that’s right, sweetie, she murmured, shifting her grip on the knife in her other hand. _Sweetie_ , she’d said, offhand, like she called Carl that all the time. Now these lines are important, she continued, because they don’t look like much, but they contain all your life, you know that? All your life.

They hold the secret to everything, Monica said, moving the knife.

Those secrets can be released, she said. The point of the knife pressed into the skin of her wrist, pushing in, small dent, drop of blood. Carl didn’t know what to do. He didn’t know what _Monica_ was doing.

All your life, Monica whispered. She pushed a bit harder, nostrils flaring, and the blood drop expanded, turned into a stream, a river, a waterfall drip dropping onto the floor. Carl stared, horrified and uncertain and wondering if he left to go get Fiona would Monica be on the floor?

Free, she said, almost last second, final.

Stop, Carl said, stop stop _stop stop_ STOP!

Ian came rushing into the room, pajamas skewed to one side. What the fuck are you—oh my god, he whispered, rushed into the room and grabbed the knife out of Monica’s hand, palms and fingers on the knife and all, making cuts, blood welling on his hands too. What the fuck are you doing? he yelled, and Lip came skidding into view, hand on the doorframe and staring.

Ian threw the knife in the sink while Lip grabbed a towel and pressed it to Monica’s wrist. It’s not deep, Monica said, almost chastising and scowling.

Lip turned to Carl and snapped, Get back to _bed_ , Carl!

Is she—

Why didn’t you get anyone? Ian asked, bending down to Monica’s side.

Mom said—

She got a fucking knife and you didn’t say anything? Lip demanded, like it was Carl’s fault that Monica put the point of the blade to her skin.

I didn’t know she’d—

Go to bed, Carl, Ian said, voice tired, disappointed.

Carl went to bed.

He’d been seven years old.

* * *

“Do you know who that is?” Carl asked, showing the picture on his phone to Liam.

Liam scrutinized the picture, touched the screen twice like he was pounding a gavel. “Fi,” he said, and Carl smiled and swiped the picture.

“And this one?”

“Lip and Ian,” Liam said. “Is Debbie next?”

Carl laughed and put down the phone, but Liam grabbed for it, so Carl let Liam play games on his phone. He watched the way his fingers tapped against the screen and remembered vague, distant things: Debbie’s fingers grasping crayons, markers red and green and purple on her fingers and forehead and arms, furiously scribbling a picture; Ian making car noises and pushing tiny toy cars around an elaborate track Lip made with lincoln logs; Fiona’s hair curly and frizzy and brushing Carl’s face as she put a plate of food down in front of him.

“Do you miss them?” Carl asked.

Liam looked up at him, dying noises emitting from the phone. “Who?” he asked.

“Debbie and Fiona and Lip and Ian.”

Liam shrugged and returned to his game. Carl felt a weird sinking in his stomach. He knew that Liam would remember them, but what was his life going to be like? Carl and Debbie had been sheltered by Lip, Ian, and Fiona, and while all five of them would protect Liam, hardly any of them were here for Liam. Liam was more often or not stuck with Carl and Debbie, and occasionally Sammi hung around. What was going to happen to him? When was Liam going to preschool? When was he gonna be cared for?

“I miss you,” Liam said, out of the blue. Carl stared at him in shock, but Liam just continued tapping at the phone, face lit up by the blue light.

“Hey,” Carl said, bumping Liam on the shoulder with his own, lightly. Liam looked up at him. “Wanna go play Battleship?”

Liam grinned and put the phone down. “Yeah.”

* * *

Sometimes the strangest things reminded Carl of Bonnie.

The other day he was watching TV with Debbie, some show all her friends were watching, and when something happened that she didn’t like, she threw a crumpled piece of paper at the TV screen. Carl was suddenly in a liquor store, Bonnie shooting a TV and the glass shattering, and Carl lept off the bed to quickly Debbie gave him a weird look.

Another time it was in class. A girl three rows in front of him and to the right had blonde hair, mid length, and when she turned to speak to her friend, the movement was so alike to Bonnie that Carl couldn’t pay attention the rest of the class.

Sometimes he thought about her late at night, staring up at the ceiling inches from his face. He thought about her soft hair and an empty parking lot and the burn of scotch down his throat. Confusing, unconnected things, or they would be, if they didn’t all cause the same ache in his chest.

Love was confusing. Any type of it—love with Bonnie turned twisted and sped downhill so quickly Carl didn’t even have a chance to find the breaks, love with his family became distorted and flipped and empty, and Carl hardly had any love for a certain thing, not like the way Ian loved ROTC and the army or Lip loved being smart. He had no fall back, not really. He used to like guns and knives, but what was he gonna do with that now? Where had he ever gone with it, really?

Carl felt stuck. He couldn’t move forward or backward or to any side—he was completely stuck, nowhere to turn, and just empty entirely. How could he go anywhere? He couldn’t pass the sixth grade, and that wouldn’t get him a job, and all he wanted to do was _do something_ , something important or significant or something that he could be proud of.

Carl glanced over at the clock. It was 12:47.

He was hardly getting any sleep these days anyways.

* * *

Carl couldn’t visit Lip because he has no money for travel and no idea where his college even was.

He couldn’t visit Fiona because she was at Gus’s place and he had no idea where that was.

He couldn’t visit Ian because Ian was in the hospital, and Carl didn’t have any way to get there either.

Debbie was out early and back late, almost exactly like the last time, except it was a different guy: no more pizza signs on top of the car, no more angry art projects, no more friends hanging around either, but car honks in the morning and arriving pink-cheeked late at night.

Carl moved around the house, but he didn’t feel like a ghost. He felt real, alive and human, rubbing his wrist where the veins could be seen. It was the house the felt like the ghost. Dining room table filled with ghost people, see-through Ian and floating Fiona and fuzzy Lip and transparent Debbie. He could hear their ghost laughter, distant and almost through a glass wall, ghost hands trading plates and food. Living room filled with ghosts piled on top of each other, slipping and falling through one another as they crowded on the couch, anxiously awaiting the next episode of some shitty reality show.

Ghost Gallaghers running through the doors and up the stairs and through the upstairs hallway, pounding on the bathroom doors and ghost screaming for the hot shower, sleeping in beds—but do ghosts need to sleep? No they don’t. They just float around the house, always present. It wasn’t even a haunting, because hauntings are scary and impersonal. These ghosts, they hurt, brushing Carl’s skin and sucking the air from his lungs.

There wasn’t anyone in the house except for him and Liam. Carl wondered if Liam could see the ghosts—weren’t kids always the ones who saw the supernatural shit? But Liam couldn’t, not really, because he’d never had the memories for these types of ghosts.

Carl ran down the upstairs hall, banging on the sides of the walls, pounding down the stairs one two three four five six seven eight, jumping onto the floor in one last _bang!_ He stared around the empty kitchen, wondered if the feeling inside him could be freedom instead of emptiness.

“I’M GONNA GET THE BAT AND DESTROY EVERYTHING!” Carl screamed at the top of his lungs, and no one came downstairs to yell at him, no Fiona grabbing the bat from his hands and ruining his fun.

“I’m gonna watch whatever I want on the TV!” he yelled next, moving into the living room. “All that rated R shit too that I was never able to watch!”

Carl stared around the living room, and waited for satisfaction to come to him, but it never arrived. No knock on the door, no doorbell ringing. No one to even answer the fucking door.

Carl said: “There’s no point in screaming anything,” because if no one was here to hear his declarations, there was no satisfaction to have in doing it.

Carl said: “No one would hear me anyways,” because his voice had always been overshadowed by his older siblings, his suggestions always smiled at and blown over, a hand rubbing fond through his hair, a punch to the shoulder.

Carl said: “I shouldn’t even speak anymore.”

Carl said: “Have I always been this invisible?”

* * *

Maybe that was why he hung around Frank. Frank used Carl and manipulated him and always used Carl for the benefit of Frank Gallagher and Frank Gallagher only.

But it was nice to be needed in those moments. It all came crashing down anyways, but Carl always tried to grasp at the edges of those moments. Kill the turtle, Lip had said, and Carl thought they could get away with waiting a while, because the turtle was slow, so Carl could keep holding onto those moments.

But turtles won the races, he remembered. Turtles won and got new livers, turtles won and managed to survive all these years, turtles won and said casually hurtful things like, “This time I can get it right.”

This time he could get it right? It was fucking ridiculous. What did that even mean? Sammi was over thirty-five. How could Frank get it right? If Frank wanted to do that, he should have kept at it with Liam, tried to be there for Liam and become some type of father figure. It had been too late for any of the other Gallaghers. Liam was right. But Sammi?

It was because she was desperate. She was desperate and clingy and gashed open emotionally, able to be filled it easily, grasping onto anything that seemed better. Frank saw that. The manipulative bastard in Frank opened Sammi up like the gift she was and exploited her to the best of his ability until Sammi began to shrivel and slice apart into long strips from the damage. Until the neediness and the clinging became octopus tentacles, wrapping around Frank and holding tight with suction cups.

They left marks on Frank’s skin—bullet wounds, too. It was almost satisfying.

Frank couldn’t get it right, of course, because Frank was fucked up made human.

* * *

Except Monica had woken Carl up alone, pressed a finger to her lips, grabbed his wrist with purple-painted nails, nails digging into his skin and creating tiny crescent moons. The tip of a knife digging into skin; resistance, for a moment, and then giving way, letting itself be pierced, releasing a tear of blood. _Free_ , Monica had said, _they hold the secret to everything_.

And Carl remembered Monica talking to him excitedly about his football team and asking him about his teammates and positions. She’d created an entire cheerleading outfit just to look the part and support him—fuck, she’d made one for Debbie too, just to get them all hyped up. She’d chosen him to go driving with her in the new car, had allowed Carl to drive, and it wasn’t the best idea, looking back now. He can still hear the rattle of her handcuffs against the bench at the station, the sting of the cuts on his cheek from the cold air of the station, the way her shoes scuffed and slipped on the linoleum floor, shining and too bright.

Maybe it went in a circle, round and round and round, a large game of telephone connected together, not by curly phone cords but by Gallagher blood. _Ian is Monica’s favorite_ , Fiona whispered to them while Ian got hit and slapped for the millionth time by Frank. _Lip is Monica’s favorite_ , Fiona accused straight to Monica’s face, body stiff and hands clenching and revenge-seeking, mother-wanting. _Debbie is Monica’s favorite_ , Lip muttered when Monica declared a shopping day, girls only, grabbing Debbie’s hand in hers and talking excitedly about clothes. _Liam is Monica’s favorite_ , Debbie explained to him when Monica wouldn’t leave, when Carl was wondering whether they’ll be a Gallagher down because she’d take Liam away. _Fiona is Monica’s favorite_ , Ian told him, because Fiona is her firstborn and she’ll always respect that, respect the care that Fiona has given her children, respect that Monica isn’t really their mother, not really.

Carl wonders when he was Monica’s favorite. What moment made him, what time made him shine, at what point did Monica’s eye turn to him and his siblings notice? At what point did Lip have to roll his eyes and Ian have to ignore the hurt and Fiona have to soothe Debbie’s worry?

Carl rubbed the veins on his wrist with his thumb, careful, shuddering. All your life, Monica had said. These lines are important. They hold the secret to everything.

Is that why she cut herself open? Were the secrets too much, thump-thumping at her throat and her wrists? Could they only be opened through a knife, through gushes of blood on the floor instead of a river down a forearm?

Carl shuddered to think of the secrets inside his own skin.

* * *

Carl wasn’t anybody’s favorite—but maybe he should accept that. Maybe he should stop holding onto it, maybe he should kill the turtle. 

Maybe, maybe, he could be his own favorite. 

**Author's Note:**

> title from Broken Boy Soldier by The Raconteurs (a song on my carl gallagher playlist yooo):
> 
> I'm done ripping myself off;  
> I'm child then man and child again,  
> the toy broken boy soldier,  
> I'm child then man then child again,  
> the boy never gets older


End file.
